On Sunday, excavators dug into the eastern wall of the Suez Canal, hoping to free the bulbous bow of the Ever Given. Photo / AP
The Suez Canal Authority has decided to postpone a critical re-floating attempt of a massive cargo ship wedged sideways in the waterway, Egyptian news service Ahram Online reports.
The refloating attempt will be delayed until "sufficient tug power is in place", the Suez Canal's service provider, Leth Agencies, said late this morning.
SCA has decided to postpone the next refloating attempt until sufficient tug power is in place. TUG ALP Guard has already arrived. Second, TUG Carlo Magna, will arrive Monday morning. In lieu of the tide table, a likely time for the next attempt is Monday evening.
— Leth Agencies (@AgenciesLeth) March 28, 2021
The next attempt would likely be made on Monday evening local time (Tuesday morning NZT).
Earlier, two additional tugboats embarked to the Suez Canal to aid efforts to free the skyscraper-sized Ever Given, even as major shippers increasingly divert their boats out of fear the vessel may take even longer to free.
The Ever Given, a Panama-flagged, Japanese-owned ship that carries cargo between Asia and Europe, got stuck on Tuesday in a single-lane stretch of the canal. In the time since, authorities have been unable to remove the vessel and traffic through the canal — valued at over $9 billion a day — has been halted, further disrupting a global shipping network already strained by the coronavirus pandemic.
The Dutch-flagged Alp Guard and the Italian-flagged Carlo Magno, called in to help tugboats already there, reached the Red Sea near the city of Suez early Sunday, satellite data from MarineTraffic.com showed. The tugboats will nudge the 400m-long (quarter-mile-long) Ever Given as dredgers continue to vacuum up sand from underneath the vessel and mud caked to its port side, said Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, which manages the Ever Given.
On Sunday, excavators dug on the eastern wall of the Suez Canal, hoping to free the bulbous bow of the Ever Given that plowed into the embankment, satellite photos showed.
The high tide at 11.30pm local time Sunday - about 10.30am NZT today - coincides with a full moon and was expected to provide the best conditions yet to free the Ever Given.
The BBC reported the tugboats had managed to move the ship "30 degrees from left and right", moving the vessel about 30m, and footage posted on Twitter appeared to show the tugboats honking their horns to celebrate this small victory.
#EverGiven has moved 2 inches
— ₿ ܡܐܪܝܘ🇱🇧🇬🇧🇦🇪 (@MarioLeb79) March 27, 2021
all tugBoats happy
Hoooorray #suezcanel pic.twitter.com/srHDtuXB8m
Workers planned to make two attempts to free the vessel on Sunday night, a top pilot with the canal authority said earlier today. The full moon offers a spring tide, or king tide, in which high tides are higher and the low tides are lower because of the effects of gravity during a straight-line alignment of the Earth, the moon and the sun.
"Sunday is very critical," the pilot said. "It will determine the next step, which highly likely involves at least the partial offloading of the vessel."
Local media reported that the effort was making headway.
#BREAKING | The EVER GIVEN vessel already moved 17 meters towards the north and there are positive indications that the ship would be refloated soon because of the high tide today.#Egypt #Suez #SuezCanal #EVERGIVEN #Evergreen | #قناة_السويس #السفينة_الجائحة pic.twitter.com/kNKCqE9Gdr
— Egypt Today Magazine (@EgyptTodayMag) March 27, 2021
Two Suez Canal Authority sources told Reuters that a mass of rock had been found at the bow of the ship, complicating salvage efforts and diverting attention to efforts to lighten the load on the stricken vessel.
Taking containers off the ship likely would add even more days to the canal's closure, something authorities have been desperately trying to avoid. It also would require a crane and other equipment that have yet to arrive.
The pilot spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity as he wasn't authorised to brief journalists.
On Saturday, the head of the Suez Canal Authority told journalists that strong winds were "not the only cause" for the Ever Given running aground, appearing to push back against conflicting assessments offered by others. Lt Gen Osama Rabei said an investigation was ongoing but did not rule out human or technical error.
Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement maintains that "initial investigations rule out any mechanical or engine failure as a cause of the grounding".
However, at least one initial report suggested a "blackout" struck the hulking vessel carrying some 20,000 containers at the time of the incident.
Rabei said he remained hopeful that dredging could free the ship without having to resort to removing its cargo, but added that "we are in a difficult situation, it's a bad incident".
Asked about when they expected to free the vessel and reopen the canal, he said: "I can't say because I do not know."
Speaking on Sunday to the pro-government Egyptian television channel Extra News, Rabei said Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi had ordered the canal authority to prepare for all options, including taking containers off of the vessel. He said officials had been in talks with the US about that possibility, without elaborating.
Shoei Kisen Kaisha Ltd, the company that owns the vessel, said it was considering removing containers if other refloating efforts failed. The vessel is operated by Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine.
The Ever Given is wedged about 6km north of the canal's Red Sea entrance near the city of Suez.
A prolonged closure of the crucial waterway would cause delays in the global shipment chain. Some 19,000 vessels passed through the canal last year, according to official figures. About 10 per cent of world trade flows through the canal. The closure could affect oil and gas shipments to Europe from the Middle East. Already, Syria has begun rationing the distribution of fuel in the war-torn country amid concerns of delays of shipments arriving amid the blockage.
As of early Sunday, over 320 ships waited to travel through the Suez, either to the Mediterranean or the Red Sea, according to canal services firm Leth Agencies. At least 10 of those vessels carried livestock, raising concerns about the animals. Rabei told the Saudi-owned satellite news channel Al-Arabiya that authorities planned to offer provisions to help them.
Dozens of others still listed their destination as the canal, though shippers increasingly appear to be avoiding the passage.
Bloomberg reports there are likely to be animals crammed into the hulls of several of the livestock ships.
Little information is available, with neither canal officials nor shipping executives willing to provide details, but data compiled by Bloomberg indicated as many as 10 vessels stuck in and around the canal could be carrying thousands of livestock. "Given the Europe-to-Saudi Arabia itinerary, they are most likely carrying sheep. Seven of the ships, headed for Jordan, have 92,000 livestock on board," the agency said.
A New Zealand animal rights organisation said the Suez situation was the latest in a series of live export crises.
"It's unforeseen circumstances like this that make live export so risky," said SAFE CEO Debra Ashton . "And it adds to our concerns for the welfare of animals in the live export trade."
"Disease, bad weather, and shipping delays can all leave animals stranded at sea."
Below the water line of the #Suez canal. Incredible how narrow and shallow compared to mega ships like #evergiven. pic.twitter.com/1roMC91rDE
— frédérik ruys (@fruys) March 28, 2021
Thousands of animals were recently stranded in the Mediterranean on board the livestock ships Elbeik and Karim Allah. Both were bound for Libya, but following an onboard outbreak of the viral disease bluetongue, they were refused entry at multiple ports. Many of those animals have now been slaughtered.
"New Zealand had its own live export crisis last year, when the Gulf Livestock 1 sunk off the coast of China," said Ashton. "It won't be the last crisis."
The world's biggest shipping company, Denmark's AP Moller-Maersk, warned its customers that it would take anywhere from three to six days to clear the backlog of vessels at the canal. Already, the firm and its partners have 27 ships waiting to enter the canal, with three stuck in the waterway itself and two more coming Sunday.
"We have until now redirected 15 vessels where we deemed the delay of sailing around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa equal to the current delay of sailing to Suez and queuing," the shipper said.
Mediterranean Shipping Co, the world's second-largest shipper, said it already had rerouted at least 11 ships around the Cape of Good Hope to avoid the canal. It turned back two other ships and said it expected "some missed sailings as a result of this incident".
"MSC expects this incident to have a very significant impact on the movement of containerised goods, disrupting supply chains beyond the existing challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic."
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